I remember in those halcyon days when I worked at a minimum wage job at Burger King. In those days the workers were almost all students or ex-students, and the boss would set up a fairly regular schedule, and if he wanted you to fill a different time slot, he'd ask.
Today, minimum wage jobs are rare as hen's teeth, occupied not by students but by retirees, single parents, people who are working two or three part-time positions. Summer teenage employment is way down because the jobs they used to take — like my Burger King hitch — are latched onto by people trying to put food on the table, not saving to buy a car stereo.
Which makes these sort of shift optimization systems particularly pernicious, because they make stability and certainty a thing of the past, turn employees into resource pegs to be auto-allocated to the next hole, and make it nigh-impossible to arrange for child care, or a second job, or other possible necessities (with knock-on effects for family and friends).
In a relatively sane job market, that sort of policy would reach a balance point pretty quickly, with folk who find it problematic going out to find another, hopefully better position. With high unemployment, though, people don't necessarily have that choice.
Kudos to Starbucks for adjusting their policies. It would be nice, though to see some stability and lack of uncertainty (you know, those things we keep hearing are necessary for "job creators" to prosper and grow) extend to more workers as well.
Employers Now Making It Impossible to Be a Poor Working Mom
Jodi Kantor published a devastating expose in the New York Times this week, detailing the latest fresh hell visited upon low wage workers by their corporate bosses: erratic work schedules created by “software that choreographs workers in precise, intricate ballets, using sales patterns and other data” to figure out how…
Any job I've had in the retail biz has erratic schedules such as what's described here.
In fact, the job I just left had the exact same thing and, strangely enough, I knew that going in.
On the other hand, though, any job I've had with such fluid scheduling was always pretty good about working around almost anything that came up in my life.
Granted, it's tough to schedule a vacation (especially if you're up against someone who wants the same time off, but has been there longer), but it can be done.
I've also never known one of these jobs (at least the ones I've had) to not work around someone's school/home schedule, either.
Oh, and none of these jobs were minimum wage jobs, either.
Glad to hear you hear you were working with bosses who were willing to work around your schedule (or who saw the value in doing so in order to retain employees, vs simply hiring someone who could be more "flexible"). Also glad to hear that you could schedule (and afford) vacations.
Sorry Dave, in my rush to get out the door I totally omitted the main point of my response to the article.
This type of scheduling isn't really anything "fresh" and the only thing really new about it is there is now a computer program to do the job that a person used to do. The only thing this article is really serving to do, in my opinion, is to try and spin just how "evil" corporations are because they won't bow to an employee's every whim. The "women and children" angle just solidifies that.
"Cliff Burrows, the group president of the American stores, said Starbucks would at least stop asking people to close at night and show up early the next morning to open "
Actually, I think there's a law to that effect already in that you need to have at least 8 hours between shifts.
But, anyway…
Over 20 years ago I was a supervisor for Sam's Club and had to do scheduling for over 40 cashiers. Along with that duty I was given a time chart and told to have so many people working at such and such time (when sales reports said the store was at its busiest…whether that was always the case, or not). There were no "set" schedules, though they were very accommodating about working around everyone's school/home schedule.
The part-time grocery job I just left was the same way, only now they're on the automated system and everyone is wishing they'd just go back to a person doing the scheduling. Again, no one there (even full timers and management) had a "set" schedule.
Oddly enough, companies want people working during their busiest (i.e. "peak") times…..though, to look at some places, you'd never know it.
+Mark Means No question that shift populations need to fit projected demand, and it won't be a consistent schedule for many people. The same was true at the BK I worked at (you schedule more people at meal rushes, and on certain days of the week, and varying around different holidays). That said, schedules were generally more consistent, with some variation as other schedules were accommodated.
I think — as your example with the grocery job indicates — the automated system is both more "efficient" and less flexible, both in the planning and in the ability to change things after the fact.
The question becomes how randomized the shift / hours assignment is (I would imagine it would be an even bigger issue for part-time employees) and how accommodating the management is about resolving conflicts or problems (and how available other jobs are to apply for if the situation cause significant hardship).
You can pooh-pooh the "women and children" aspect of the article, but that seems to me to be a real thing. It's not a matter of giving into every employee's whim, but on the problems of uncertainty as to hourly assignments that cannot be planned around until the week before, especially with one of multiple part-time jobs and if the employer in question has a we've-got-five-people-lined-up-for-your=job attitude.
Regarding the "8 hours between shifts" law — nope, except in some specialized industries, according to http://work.chron.com/minimum-time-between-work-shifts-hourly-employees-25741.html No federal or state laws; in some states you may get split-shift pay (an extra hour), or you might get OT depending on how it's structure (again, depending on the state — federal law is only OT for non-exempt employees over 40 hours / week; California, on the other hand, requires OT for over 40 hours in a day, though if the split shift is in different days that wouldn't count; some states charge OT for over 8 hours in a 24 hour period).
In my experiences (and I know it's not the uniform case), management has always been pretty good about working around people's schedule because I think they know that not having a set schedule sucks. I've never been in (thankfully) a situation where it was ever said, or hinted, that if you didn't like it, there's always someone to take your place. Everyone involved knows not knowing what you're working the next week is a pain in the rear, you just make the best of it.
"You can pooh-pooh the "women and children" aspect of the article, but that seems to me to be a real thing."
I'm not doubting that one bit, but other people besides mothers with kids are put out, as well. They seem to spin it around that just one situation, in my view.
+Mark Means Certainly they've picked an example most suited to tugging heartstrings, etc. That doesn't make it incorrect (or even the one with the highest levels of pain from the problem), but mentioning how it caused difficulty for a teen on summer vacation because he wasn't sure if he'd be home in time to watch Colbert on any given night, it probably wouldn't have the same impact.